Warning Signs

Alan Caruba's blog is a daily look at events, personalities, and issues from an independent point of view. Copyright, Alan Caruba, 2015. With attribution, posts may be shared. A permission request is welcome. Email acaruba@aol.com.

Tuesday, March 31, 2015

The annual
calendar is filled with days and months designated for the
purpose of calling attention to some event, personality, or cause. The U.S. celebrates
the birthdays of Lincoln and Washington that fall close together. There’s
Mother’s and Father’s Day, Labor Day and Veteran’s Day, Valentine’s,
Independence Day, Thanksgiving, Easter and Christmas.

But who
decided that April was “Earth Month” or that April 22 is “Earth Day”?

Why are we
expected to worship the planet that was here billions of years before we showed
up and will likely be here long after we manage to destroy ourselves with
cataclysmic wars. And it is worship
that is at the heart of these two events. That alone should tell you how
essentially pagan they are.

This Earth
Month will celebrate its 45th anniversary, having begun in 1970 and,
not surprisingly, its theme is “Our planet in peril.” Our planet is not in
peril. It’s been around for 4.5 billion years and short of a rogue asteroid or
our getting sucked into a black hole, the planet will be around several
billions of years more. The galaxy in which we live is relatively predictable
and stable, so the notion that the Earth is in peril borders on idiocy.

Well,
idiocy, if you think that it is in peril from us, the human species. This is at the core of the environmental
mindset. It appears that merely using the Earth as a place to live is reason
enough to hold us responsible for everything that naturally occurs to it.

Environmentalists
do not like the human race and will not hesitate to tell you there are too many
of us. They do what they can to reduce the population through disease by, for
example, banning DDT and any other chemicals that protect us from insect and
rodent pests that are major vectors for the transmission of disease.

According
to the 2015 Earth Month Network, Inc. announcement “There are literally
hundreds of problems and issues plaguing our global environment, i.e., climate
change, global warming and their effects; and the continuation of polluting our
delicate ecosystem just to mention a few.”

Which is
it? Climate change or global warming? There hasn’t been any dramatic global
warming in the past 19 years during which the planet has been in a natural
cooling cycle, along with the Sun which we depend upon to warm us. So anyone
claiming the Earth is warming is blowing smoke up your skirt.

As for
climate change, that has always been occurring. Short term it’s called the four
seasons. Long term it takes the form of ice ages, major glaciations that have
occurred every 140 million years, and other eras such as the Great Permian
Extinction, the largest in Earth’s history that wiped out an estimated 95% of
every kind of life-form on Earth. It was one of four mass extinctions over the
course of the 3.5 billion years that life has existed on Earth. Remember the
mammoths? They died a mere 11,500 years ago.

Last year,
the Earth Month theme was “Returning to Nature.” Do you really want to return to
nature? No electricity. No shelter other than a nice cave. No food except for
the animals or fish you would have to catch for dinner. No vegetables or fruits
except those you could find wherever you lived. That’s right, no supermarkets!
And, if you want to go anywhere, you will have to walk.

Yes, nature sounds
wonderful and, in its own way, is wonderful, but the human species has devoted
a great deal of time to finding ways to survive it.

I was
reminded that April was Earth Month when I received an email from the Saybrook
Point Inn & Spa which said this Connecticut site was “excited to offer a
special package to honor Earth Day.” It is “a Certified Green Hotel” and you
will be treated to a “unique Ecotourism Getaway” that provides an
“environmentally friendly stay without sacrificing comfort.” Why would you want
to pay them for their special package if it didn’t include comfort and lots of
it? Mostly what Saybrook Point wants is your money, just like any other
perfectly ordinary inn and spa that isn’t “certified.”

One can be confident that we are going to be regaled with all manner of
“environmental” messages and events throughout April, all of which have the
same theme: the Earth is in danger from YOU!

Do
yourself a favor. Ignore them. Get in your car and go where you want. Go to the
supermarket and don’t worry about the plastic packaging or the plastic bags.
Set the temperature in your home or apartment to a level of comfort that you
like. It’s your life and you pay good money to benefit from all the
conveniences of modern life.

Let’s
appreciate the Earth, not worship it.

Environmentalism
is one of the great scams of the modern era. Its emphasis on “renewable energy”
has been a huge, expensive failure. Its claims of disappearing forests are
bogus and its demands for the reduction of carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions will
only harm all vegetation everywhere. The Earth needs CO2 in the same way you
and all other living creatures need oxygen.

Let’s
celebrate mankind’s mastery of the Earth in the form of agriculture, ranching,
sophisticated shelters from the log cabin to the skyscraper, the channeling of
rivers to produce energy and the technology that provides clean water for us.
And, yes, manufacturing. You can’t even imagine what the world was like before
the discovery of coal, oil, and natural gas.

Monday, March 30, 2015

My Mother
taught gourmet cooking, haute cuisine, for three decades in the local adult
schools, first just to women and later with courses just for men as they too
wanted to learn how to make succulent dishes, delicious sauces, and to bake as
well. She also wrote a cookbook, “Cooking with Wine and High Spirits”, as well
as one filled with dishes that the colonial Americans enjoyed.

Meanwhile,
at home, my Father and I dined daily like royalty and neither of us got fat.
Why? Because eating well means listening to your body when it is hungry and not
eating when it’s not. What we are never told amidst the hourly deluge of print
and broadcast advertising and reports is that we are each quite individual in
terms of inherited genetic traits and that our bodies have different needs as
we age,

Instead we
are told over and over again that we must be “thin” and that our bodies are not
what the culture says is “beautiful.” Try watching television for an hour
without getting this message. It starts early and, currently, the First Lady is
dictating what school children should or should not eat. It’s none of her
business, but it is most certainly big business when you calculate the billions
earned by physicians giving nutrition advice, pharmaceutical companies, diet
companies offering pre-prepared dinners, others saying their foods are
healthier,and allthe others that have climbed on the multi-billion
dollar gravy train.

An
excellent book by Harriet Brown, “Body of Truth”, ($25.99, Da Capo Press)
should be must-reading for everyone who has spent their life obsessing about
every bite of food they eat. Based on extensive research, over twenty pages of
notes citing her sources, she says what virtually any physician, nutritionist,
or diet-peddler already knows. “Unfortunately, the evidence suggests that
dieting makes people neither thinner, nor healthier. Quite the opposite,
actually nearly everyone who diets winds up heavier in the long run, and many
people’s health suffers rather than improves, especially over time.”

“Each of
us thinks our obsession with weight and body image is ours alone,” says Brown.
“We blame ourselves for not being thin enough, sexy enough, shaped just the
right way. We believe we’re supposed to fit the standards of the day” and it
starts very early in life; by as early as three to five years old.

“This is not a personal issue,” says
Brown. “This is not about your weakness or my laziness or her lack of
self-discipline. This obsession is bigger than all of us. It’s become epidemic,
endemic, and pandemic.”

In page
after page Brown cites facts that too often do not make it into the pages of
the newspapers and magazines we read, or on the radio and television we listen
to and watch. For example, “The average American is in fact heavier (by about
twenty pounds) and taller (by about an inch) than we were in 1960. And dire predictions
notwithstanding, the rates of overweight and obesity leveled off around 2000.
We’re not actually getting heavier and heavier; our collective weight has
pretty much plateaued.”

Moreover,
all those psychotropic medications we’re being prescribed to treat anxiety,
depression, bipolar disorder, personality disorders, psychoses, and other
mental health conditions “are known to cause weight gain, especially when taken
over a period of time.”

We are
constantly told that being overweight or even obese takes years off one’s life,
but Brown’s research found that neither condition increased a person’s risk of
dying prematurely and being mildly obese increases it only slightly. As you
might already suspect, it is the lack of physical activity that poses a great
health risk.

Brown
cites studies that found that being physically unfit was as much or more of a
risk factor for heart disease and death as diabetes, obesity, and other
weight-based risk factors. Researchers argue that “it’s better to be fit and fat
than unfit and thin.

If any of
this hits home with you, if you find yourself criticizing a child for their
size and weight, looking in the mirror and being displeased with your own,
obsessing over everything you eat or serve, then Brown’s words should be
embraced when she says “We’d do better for ourselves and our children if,
instead of pushing diets and surgeries and medications, we look at real-world
strategies for eating more fruits and vegetables, getting enough sleep,
dancing, playing sports, and other joyful physical activities.”

“Normal
eating is going to the table hungry and eating until you are satisfied. It is
being able to choose food you like and eat it and truly get enough of it—not
just stop eating because you think you should.”

“Normal
eating is giving yourself permission to eat something because you are happy,
sad, or bored, or just because it feels good.”

Listen to
what your body is telling you. The message has been passed down from generation
to generation of your ancestors through your genetic code. Eat what you want.
Stop dieting. Stay active and fit.

There’s
countless, endless messages about your weight and how your body looks. When you
decide to feel good about yourself, you will be free to ignore them.

Sunday, March 29, 2015

What
Americans have a hard time understanding is that, for all the Iranian
negotiators, the outcome of the nuclear arms deal that the United States is
leading all comes down to just one man, Sayyed Ali-Khamenei, otherwise known as
the Supreme Leader of Iran.

In the 21st
century, it is hard to comprehend that a nation could be ruled by a man whose
powers supersede that nation’s president, its civil government, its judiciary
and its military. Iran has had only one other Supreme Leader since its founding
in 1979, Ruhollah Khomeini who held the position until his death in 1989. The
1979 Islamic Revolution in Iran overthrew the Shah in order to secure greater
freedom, but the Iranians ended up more servile than before.

This is
who Obama and P5+1 team (France, Great Britain, Russia, China, plus Germany) is
negotiating with as they move toward the March 31 deadline for the talks.
Khamenei has already said that the only thing he wants is the immediately
lifting of the economic sanctions that are credited with bringing the Iranians
to the negotiation table.

The
negotiations have to be seen in the context of Iran’s daily cries of “Death to
America” and “Death to Israel.”They
have to be seen in the context of a history of Iranian aggression against
America and Israel that has included the bombing of our Marine barracks in
Beirut in 1983, attacks on U.S. embassies and countless other examples of their
bad intentions, not the least of which has been its sponsorship of two
anti-Israel groups, Hezbollah in Lebanon and, to a lessor extent, Hamas in
Gaza.

Any nuclear deal that permits Iran to
continue to enrich enough uranium to make its own nuclear weapons is a very bad
deal. Netanyahu came to the U.S. at the invitation of Congress to make that
point as the leader of the nation the Supreme Leader intends to destroy. We
would be next.

All this
is just slightly insane when one considers that President Obama has been
obsessed with reaching an agreement with Iran before and since he took office
in 2009. He has done everything possible to demonstrate his desire to remove
the obstacles to conferring approval on Iran. In the process, he has made us
look and be weak.

It is
hopeful news, therefore, as reported in The
Hill that “Congress is growing hostile to the emerging nuclear deal with
Iran, leaving President Obama with little political cover as he approaches a
critical deadline in the talks. Should a deal be reached, it would transform
U.S. and Iranian relations and potentially give Obama the most important
foreign policy achievement of his second term.”

His most
significant foreign policy failure, however, has been his betrayal of Israel,
the only ally in the Mideast that the U.S. truly has had. Declassifying
information about Israel’s nuclear arms was pure treachery. That said, it was
no secret and no doubt has protected Israel against apocalyptic destruction.

Consider
the Middle Eastern foreign policy failures Obama has had to date. The Saudis
and other Gulf States have abandoned hope that Obama would resist the Iranian
proxies taking over Yemen. They are pursuing their own military operation
there. Egypt which replaced the Muslim Brotherhood with a U.S.-friendly president
has not seen any renewal of the former friendly relations that existed. Iraq is
in turmoil thanks to Obama’s removal of U.S. troops in 2011 and even has
Iranian military units fighting ISIS. Syria has been in a civil war that has
killed thousands. It’s a long list but it comes down to Obama’s ending of the
U.S. role in the Mideast.

Just as
the Iranians are controlled by their Supreme Leader, we have a President who
sees himself and his role in a similar way. He has demonstrated his
dissatisfaction with the Constitution and the limits it puts on the Executive
branch. He has ignored Congress and has been experiencing reversals of policy
by the judicial branch. In the case of the Iran negotiations Congress has been
kept in the dark along with the rest of the American people.

The
Secretary of State, John Kerry, has declared that any outcome of the
negotiations would legally non-binding. If so, why are they being pursued? Such
negotiations at the treaty level have always required the consent of the Senate,
but the Obama regime is seeking to by-pass that mandatory factor.

On the
other side of the table, it has been reported that the main stumbling block to
agreement has been Iran’s failure to cooperate with a United Nations probe into
whether it tried to build atomic weapons in the past. If United Nations
inspectors, in the future as in the past, are unable to verify that Iran is not
continuing its nuclear weapons program, there is no way an agreement of any
kind could be achieved.

On March
26, the Washington Examiner reported “The Obama administration is giving in to
Iranian demands about the scope of its nuclear program as negotiators work to
finalize a framework agreement in the coming days, according to sources
familiar with the administration’s position in the negotiations.”

You can be
very sure that the Supreme Leader is watching this closely. If he can continue
to get the kind of negotiations—an accord—that will result in Iran becoming a
sanctions-free, nuclear-armed nation, he will permit the deal to proceed.

The
Iranians, as always, will cheat on any deal to achieve this goal. Sadly,
everyone at the table knows that, but Russia and China have strong economic
reasons to pretend otherwise.

If the Supreme
Leader gets what he wants the prospect for war in the Middle East would
increase immeasurably. The threat level to the U.S. and Israel would be off the
charts.

Thursday, March 26, 2015

Would you
vote for a man who openly says he favors a fair tax and wants to abolish the
Internal Revenue Service?

Would you
vote for a man who opposes Obama’s efforts to offer illegal aliens amnesty and
promises to secure the borders?

Would you
vote for a man who decries a federal government “that wages an assault on our
religious liberty”?

Would you
vote for a man who wants a federal government that “works to defend the
sanctity of human life” and would “uphold the sacrament of marriage”?

Would you
vote for a man who defends our Second Amendment rights and condemns the effort ban ammunition?

Would you
vote for a man who condemns a federal government that seeks to dictate school
curriculums and wants to repeal “every word of Common Core”?

Would you
vote for a man who would stand “unapologetically with the nation of Israel”?

Would you
vote for a man who has pledged that he would do everything he could to ensure
that Iran does not acquire a nuclear weapon?

Would you
vote for a man who openly says he would do everything he could to defeat
radical Islamic terrorism?

I said I
would on May 6, 2013 when he was beginning to get attention. Columnist George
Will said he was “as good as it gets” when it comes to being a
true conservative in Congress.

I am of
course speaking of Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) who has announced his candidacy to be
the presidential candidate of the Republican Party.

I suspect
that his announcement probably terrifies the Republican “Establishment” who
have managed to serve up some good men, but poor candidates, to be President.
When Republican voters stayed home, we got Barack Obama in 2008 and 2012.

Now they
want to get the Party faithful to vote for Jeb Bush, but from my vantage point,
the real base is ready to vote for anybody else, Sen. Cruz, Wisconsin Gov.
Walker, and Sen. Rubio come to mind.

First of
all, there is no Tea Party in the sense of a political party with its own
candidates. What there is are Republicans who believe in the U.S. Constitution,
small government, fiscal prudence, strong national security, and all those
other values outlined in Ted Cruz’s speech at Liberty University in Lynchburg,
Virginia.

As Cruz
said in an email about his announcement “Washington, D.C. has become completely
disconnected from the values of real Americans. That’s why we are now more than
$18 trillion in debt, why wages have stagnated, and why our foreign policy is
an absolute mess.” That pretty much sums up what Obama has delivered.

Does it
surprise anyone that Cruz’s candidacy was instantly attacked, not just by Democrats, but by a number of leading Republicans? Rep. Peter King,
appearing on CNN’s “Situation Room” with host Wolf Blitzer, said, he’d “jump
off that bridge” when he got to it if Cruz becomes the GOP candidate. He also
accused Cruz and Rand Paul of being “counterfeit conservatives.” Nonsense!

The March
24 Wall Street Journal had a lengthy editorial devoted to “The Cruz Candidacy”
noting that on most issues with the exception of immigration they found
themselves in agreement with him and offered an upbeat view that “The good news
for GOP voters is that their field of candidates in 2016 is going to be deep,
offering many varieties of conservative leadership” but ending with
reservations about “his polarizing style” which was another way of saying he is
not a wishy-washy centrist.

We will
hear more such accusations and criticisms and, as often as not, they will come
from the GOP Establishment.

The GOP
Establishment regards real conservatives as unable to secure election,
preferring RINOs, Republicans in Name Only, and candidates who move as close to
the center politically as possible. It seems to have escaped their notice that the Republicans elected in the last two midterm elections were sent to
Washington, D.C. by Tea Party and other serious conservative voters.

It has
been a long time since a real conservative Republican, Ronald Reagan, was
elected President, but it can happen again as serious voters, particularly
those who are independents, join with those who find Sen. Cruz a refreshing
voice, Will he get the nomination? We are a very long way from the 2016
election, but at least we know it won’t be a boring one!

Wednesday, March 25, 2015

Americans
are learning the hard way that the federal government should not be permitted
to impose one-size-fits-all standards to education. It was never intended to
play a role in education and the absence of any mention in the Constitution is
proof enough that education was intended to be supervised by the states where
the school districts, schools, and parents are closest to the process.

Common
Core is going to play a large role in the 2016 elections and that is likely to
impact former Governor Jeb Bush the most. At the heart of the unhappiness with
Common Core has been its emphasis on testing.

A March 20th
Wall Street Journal article, “Bush Faces Test of Exam Policy”, reported that “A
Rasmussen Reports nationwide survey in February found that 52% of respondents
thought there was too much emphasis on testing in schools and 69% believed
there was too much ‘teaching to the test.’”

The
transformation of the nation’s educational system began when the Department of
Education was signed into law by Jimmy Carter in 1979 and began operating in
1980. It continued with the passage of No Child Left Behind (NCLB), the name
given to the reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act. It
requires all public schools receiving Title 1 federal funding to annually
administer a state-wide standardized test to all students. NCLB was coauthored
by Representatives John Boehner (R-OH), George Miller (D-CA) and Senators
Edward Kennedy (D-MA) and Judd Gregg (R-NH).

President
George W. Bush was a leading NCLB advocate and signed it into law on January 8,
2002. Each state was expected to develop its own standards because NCLB did not
impose a national one. This year when its reauthorization came up for
consideration, it was pulled from the House floor in February. The Heritage
Foundation deems it “outdated, ineffective, and prioritizes government
standards over the needs of individual students.”

According
to Neal McCluskey, Associate Director of the Cato Institute’s Center for
Educational Freedom, “There is no compelling evidence that No Child Left
Behind, and federal intervention overall, has produced much good, while it is
very clear it has cost substantial money and is unconstitutional.”

In
Missouri, circuit court Judge Daniel R. Green, ruled in February that the
state’s payment of more than $4 million in membership fees as part of a standardized
testing consortium was illegal. The Smarter Balanced Assessment Consortium “is
an unlawful interstate compact to which the U.S. Congress has never consented,
whose existence and operation violate” Article 1 and 10 of the federal
Constitution. It dealt a blow to Common Core.

It’s not
just Missouri. In January the Mississippi Board of Education voted to withdraw
from the Partnership for the Assessment of Readiness for College and Careers
consortium which is one of the two tests aligned to Common Core. A full repeal
of Common Core standards is under discussion.

By June
2014, two months before its implementation date, 19 states had either withdrawn
from the tests or had paused implementation of the standards. Four of the 19,
Indiana, Oklahoma, South Carolina and Louisiana had completely exited the
national standards. Alaska, Nebraska, Texas and Virginia never adopted it.

Gov. Bush
is beginning to put some distance between himself and Common Core. His spokeswoman,
Kristi Campbell, said “There is such a thing as too much testing.” Reportedly
“he says the federal government shouldn’t impose particular tests or curricula
on states.” Meanwhile, in one state after another, Common Core is being
rejected.

On the
political front, the Heartland Institute’s monthly newsletter, School Reform News, reported in March
that “Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker, a front runner in the contest for the
Republican nomination for president, made bold reforms of elementary,
secondary, and college education a prominent part of his proposed 2015-17
budget.”

“The
budget, presented on February 3, would remove the cap on the state’s school
choice program, eliminate state funding for Smarter Balanced tests tied to
Common Core State Standards, and cut $300 million from the University of Wisconsin
over two years in exchange for greater autonomy for the system.”

On Capitol
Hill, four Republican senators including Rob Portman of Ohio and Pat Roberts of
Kansas have introduced a bill that would prevent the federal government from
strong-arming states into adopting education standards such as Common Core and,
presumably, NCLB. The bill is called learning Opportunities Created at the
Local Level Act. As reported in the Daily Caller.com, it “would limit the
federal government’s ability to control state educational standards and
curriculums through financial incentives, grants, mandates, and other forms of
influence.”

There’s no
way to know when Common Core will die or whether No Child Left Behind will
suffer a similar fate but the trend nationwide is obvious. Parents, teachers,
schools and districts want to determine the best curricula for the children in
their systems. They want the federal government out and that is a very good
thing.

Tuesday, March 24, 2015

President
Obama made no secret of his displeasure that Benjamin Netanyahu was reelected
to be Israel’s Prime Minister. Only David Ben Gurion, Israel’s first Prime
Minister and one of the nation’s founders, served longer.

Obama
lives in some parallel universe apart from the lessons of history and the
realities of what is actually occurring. On May 18, 2009, not long after Obama
had been in office and Netanyahu was visiting the White House, Obama was
demanding that he endorse Palestinian statehood and freeze the settlements on
the West Bank.

Considering
that the Palestinians had refused statehood from the day the United Nations
endorsed Israel’s independence that has been a fool’s mission no matter who was
President or Prime Minister.

As for
Obama’s demands about settlements, who is Obama to tell the Israelis in 2009
where and if they can build the housing needed for its growing population? And
yet Netanyahu, seeking to accommodate Obama, endorsed Palestinian statehood
shortly thereafter and then announced a ten-month freeze on settlement
development.

What did
Netanyahu get in return? Nothing.

In 2014
when the Israelis responded militarily to months of rocket attacks from Gaza, it
contacted the Department of Defense to request Hellfire missiles and Obama
reportedly personally blocked the shipments.

The talks
with Iran that have been Obama’s obsession since he took office have continued
despite his promise not to “have talks forever.” This has been his pattern of
behavior since the day he took office. As Wall Street columnist Brett Stephens
observed, “The President collects hard favors from allies and replays them with
neglect and derision. This is the mentality of a peevish and callow potentate.”

Netanyahu’s
speech to a joint meeting of Congress left the White House deeply angered and
his reelection probably stunned them. The Israelis are accustomed to being
underestimated.

At this
point, Obama has given plenty of evidence that he is both pro-Islam and
anti-Israel. Michael Haltman has written a timeline of events, “Obama’s Israel Hatred”, that reflect Obama’s attitudes in terms of the people with whom he
associated before his 2008 run for the presidency and the events that followed
thereafter.

Unspoken,
but widely suspected, is the question of whether Obama is also anti-Semitic. As
Haltman points out “Obama has spent his entire life surrounded by haters of
Israel, from the former Palestine Liberation Organization, Rashid Khalid to
former Jimmy Carter National Security Advisor, Zbigniew Bazinski. Most famously
people became aware of Rev. Jeramiah Wright whose church Obama attended and
where he was married. Wright has been quoted saying “Them Jews ain’t going to
let him talk to me.”

The
question of anti-Semitism is complicated by the fact that Obama has surrounded
himself with Jews in the White House.

The
Secretary of the Treasury, Jack Lew, is Jewish. As is Gene Sperling, the
Director of the National Economic Council. Janet Yellen, the Chairwoman of the
Federal Reserve is Jewish as is a senior advisor, David Plouffe, as well as a
dozen others. Rahm Emanuel, Obama’s former chief of staff is Jewish as was his
former senior advisor, David Axelrod. At least fifteen other Jews formerly held
high office in the administration.

For
anti-Semites, that would be “proof” that the White House is “run by Jews”, but
that would not only be absurd, it would ignore the Muslims that Obama has put
into positions of power and influence throughout his administration. Obama's Jewish personnel choices all share his very liberal views.

I define
anti-Semitism as a serious or general dislike of Jews. It can be either overt
or covert. As in most cases in life, you can make your own conclusion based on
a person’s actions, not words.

There is
little doubt, however, that Obama shares an antipathy to Israel that is
widespread among world leaders and many others. After two thousand years, the
reemergence of Israel as a sovereign state in 1948 has no doubt baffled and
irked those who hold Jews in contempt. Up until the election of Obama Israel
had been supported by whoever was in the White House and understood to be an
ally.

Now that
he is in the final years of his presidency, Obama does not have to hide his
antipathy to Israel, nor did he make much effort to do so in this first term.

The White
House suggestion that they might take the two-state issue to the United Nations
Security Council reflects Obama’s pique over Netanyahu’s speech to Congress
opposing the Iran nuclear deal and his reelection. By contrast, his Palestinian
counterpart, Mahmoud Abbas, is now in the 11th year of his four-year
term. Who needs elections in Palestine? And the Palestinian Authority is now linked
with Hamas, the Gaza-based terrorist group.

Seeking
United Nations involvement is a last ditch effort to harm Israel, but it hardly
matters what the United Nations does or does not do because it is the most
obscenely anti-Israel international institution.

What
troubles most people, irrespective of any real or assumed anti-Israel or
anti-Semitic element, is Obama’s pursuit of a deal with the Iranians that would
permit them at some point to make their own nuclear weapons. It quite simply
makes no sense to anyone except Obama. Iran has made no secret of its wish to “wipe
Israel off the map.” Netanyahu left no
doubt that Israel would use military force to destroy Iran’s nuclear weapons
facilities. In the past they destroyed such facilities in Iraq and Syria.

As for the
Iranians, they don’t care how the negotiations turn out. They have gotten a
respite from the sanctions and had funds that were frozen returned; securing money and time to continue their nuclear ambitions.

A

s for the
destruction of Israel, Iran has both Hezbollah in Lebanon and Hamas in Gaza as
their proxies to threaten Israel, so they can wait for a nuke to finish off the
job. And who did the U.S. just remove from its list of terrorist nations and
groups? Iran and Hezbollah!

I suspect
that once Obama returns to civilian life, we will learn more about his views about
race and religion. What we have learned at this point is that he doesn’t like
an America that is a world power and the leader of the free world. His policy
of retreat has caused allies and enemies alike to distrust him.

Anti-Semitic?
Anti-Israel? Regrettably his words and actions demonstrate that this can be
said of Obama with relative ease.

About Me

I am and have been for a long time a writer by profession. I have several books to my credit and my daily column, "Warning Signs", is disseminated on many Internet news and opinion websites, as well as blogs. In addition, I am a longtime book reviewer and have a blog offering a monthly report on new fiction and non-fiction.